Guides by Denis
267 articles
The Worse a Car's Title, the Less Likely the Seller Shows You the VIN
A missing VIN usually means a lazy listing. But sorted by title status, the pattern is too clean to be laziness — and the cars hiding it hardest are the expensive ones.
Adding All-Wheel Drive to a Hybrid Costs 14 MPG. On a Petrol Car It Costs 4.
We showed earlier that all-wheel drive barely costs fuel on a modern car. That turns out to be true for petrol engines and badly wrong for hybrids.
One in Five Recalls Ever Issued Warns About Fire. At Kia It's Two in Five.
Every recall carries a description of what happens if the defect isn't fixed. I read all of them looking for one word, and it turned up far more often than a headline-driven view of the industry would suggest.
There Is No Cheap Tesla. Its Price Floor Is Higher Than Porsche's.
Every prestige brand eventually produces a cheap used example. A tired old Mercedes is a recognised category. A tired old Tesla, it turns out, isn't one yet.
Cylinder Deactivation Is on One in Six Cars and Saves Exactly Nothing
The technology switches off half the engine when you don't need it, and it's fitted to millions of cars. I checked what it does to the EPA figures and got a result I had to run twice.
Cars Described as "Like New" Are More Likely to Have Been Rebuilt Than Cars Described as "Fair"
We already showed that the words sellers pick describe mileage rather than condition. Cross them against title status and they describe something worse — in the opposite direction to what you'd expect.
Every 1,000 Miles You Drive Costs About Half a Percent of the Car
Everyone knows mileage costs money. Nobody has a number for it. I worked out what 1,000 miles actually takes off a car, and the answer is portable across the whole market.
Tesla Fixes 74% of Its Recalls Overnight. Kia Fixes 31% That Way.
Two cars can have the same number of recalls and completely different consequences for the owner. The difference is whether the fix requires a workshop or a download.
You Can Tell a Dealer From a Private Seller by the Last Three Digits of the Price
Two numbers in every listing carry information the seller never meant to give you. Neither is the price itself or the mileage — it's how they were written.
An Airbag Inflator Defect Takes 9 Years to Be Admitted. A Seat Belt Fault Takes 2.
Some defects get found almost immediately and some hide for a decade. Sorting recalls by how long they took to surface produces a ranking that says a lot about which parts fail slowly.
The Most Economical Petrol Car Ever Sold in America Is From 1986
I sorted every petrol car in the EPA database by combined economy, expecting something recent at the top. The winner was built in 1986, and nothing since has come close.
The Turbo Was Sold as an Efficiency Upgrade. At the Same Displacement It Loses 7 MPG.
Downsizing came with a promise: a small turbo engine does the work of a big one on less fuel. I compared them litre for litre, and the promise doesn't survive contact with the EPA database.